ched as though he would feel for her in the air.

Without pause, and under an instinctive and uncontrollable impulse, he
tore the bandages from his eyes. The sun was streaming in. As he met it
his eyes blinked and a cry burst from him; a wild cry whose joy and
surprise pierced even through the shut portals of the swooning woman's
brain. Not for worlds would she ever after have lost the memory of that
sound:

'Light! light! Oh, God! Oh, God! I am not blind!'

But he looked round him still in terrified wonder:

'Where is she? Where is she? I cannot see her! Stephen! Stephen!
where are you?' Mrs. Stonehouse, bewildered, pointed where Stephen's
snow-white face and brilliant hair seemed in the streaming sunlight like
ivory and gold:

'There! There!' He caught her arm mechanically, and putting his eyes to
her wrist, tried to look along her pointed finger. In an instant he
dropped her arm moaning.

'I cannot see her! What is it that is over me? This is worse than to be
blind!' He covered his face with his hands and sobbed.

He felt light strong fingers on his forehead and hands; fingers whose
touch he would have known had they been laid on him were he no longer
quick. A voice whose music he had heard in his dreams for two long years
said softly:

'I am here, Harold! I am here! Oh! do not sob like that; it breaks my
heart to hear you!' He took his hands from his face and held hers in
them, staring intently at her as though his passionate gaze would win
through every obstacle.

That moment he never forgot. Never could forget! He saw the room all
rich in yellow. He saw Pearl, pale but glad-eyed, lying on a sofa
holding the hand of her mother, who stood beside her. He saw the great
high window open, the lines of the covered stone balcony without, the
stretch of green sward all vivid in the sunshine, and beyond it the blue
quivering sea. He saw all but that for which his very soul longed;
without to see which sight itself was valueless . . . But still he
looked, and looked; and Stephen saw in his dark eyes, though he could not
see her, that which made her own eyes fill and the warm red glow on her
face again . . . Then she raised her eyes again, and the gladness of her
beating heart seemed the answer to his own.

For as he looked he saw, as though emerging from a mist whose obscurity
melted with each instant, what was to him the one face in all the world.
He did not think then of its beauty--th